Why should Canada embrace climate change adaptation?
Adaptation encompasses adjustments in practices, processes or structures in response to projected or actual climate and extreme weather events. This approach is different than mitigation, which focuses on activities that reduce or eliminate the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
To understand the drivers for adaptation, it might be instructive to visualize Canada as a house with worn shingles, where every time it rains, water drips through to the structure below. We are faced with two choices – do we fix the roof (i.e. adapt), or do we stand by and watch the inside of the house slowly disintegrate (i.e. do nothing)? As the findings presented in our project illustrate, “fixing the roof” is the cost-effective and risk-adverse choice that Canada should embrace.
Why now?
The decision to focus the project on adaptation, rather than mitigation, is based on evidence that the climate is already undergoing observable change and will continue to do so. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. Indeed, between 2001 and 2010, global temperatures averaged 0.46°C above the 1961-1990 average, and were the highest ever recorded for a 10-year period since the beginning of instrumental climate records.
Canadians are also exposed more than ever to the consequences of the changing climate. Property damage from weather-related perils has increased at an alarming rate over the last few decades. Aging infrastructure, population growth, and economic development have increased the exposure of Canadians to this extreme weather. Climate change further intensifies this risk by creating atmospheric conditions more conducive to variable and extreme weather. Damage from the Manitoba and Quebec floods (2011), tornadoes in Goderich (2011) and Vaughn, Ontario (2009), wildfires in Slave Lake, Alberta (2011) and Kelowna, BC (2003), and heavy rain events in Toronto (2005) and Peterborough (2003), serve as an important reminder about this trend.
What are the benefits?
First, climate change adaptation is a cost-effective approach to improve Canada’s competitive advantage as the climate changes. For example, the cost to build a new house, transmission line or mine that is adaptive to climate change is not materially different than building the structure without adaptive capacity given that a re-build or retrofit is much more expensive.
Second, action on climate change adaptation improves Canada’s international environmental credentials. Throughout 2011 and 2012, the CCAP was presented to a number of high-ranking audiences, including the US Secretary of Energy, NASA, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and senior UK politicians. All of these audiences applauded Canada’s effort to prioritize climate change adaptation challenges and solutions. These actions improve Canada’s environmental credibility, and help secure a “social license to operate” for Canadian businesses looking to expand their markets in other countries.
Third, prioritizing actions on climate change adaptation creates an opportunity for Canadian’s from all regions and backgrounds to have a stake in shaping the way our country responds to climate change. A great deal of adaptation research begins with governments or scientists who choose the project’s priorities. The CCAP tries to spark a debate on adaptation priorities so Canadians can engage their own perspective and experience to inform our adaptation strategy.
What are Canada’s adaptation priorities?
The issue of whether Canada should focus on climate adaptation is no longer a question – the answer is “yes”. The imperative now is to prioritize the key adaptation challenges to be addressed in the immediate term, and identify how to best execute solutions to these challenges.
To achieve this objective, the CCAP identified:
- Five key areas and courses of action that Canada must engage to limit current and future climate change impacts to industries and public sectors
- Three key areas and courses of action that Canada must engage to limit current and future climate change impacts to the property & casualty insurance sector
Why these priorities?
- In addition to identifying adaptation solutions, the project’s mandate focuses on implementing these solutions. Implementing change is a formidable task, so the project has focussed its resources on a contracted list of climate change challenges, rather than diffusing efforts across a range of challenges.
- CCAP considered climate impacts to both industry and public sectors. Industry sectors ranged from mining to banking to telecommunications. Public sectors included non-industry areas, such as, freshwater resources, biodiversity, and human health impacts.
- The property & casualty sector was treated separately due to its high exposure to climate change challenges.